(Photo: Gongju Gongsanseong Fortress)

“Ms. O’Leary, we lose all!”

It’s one of my favorite memories of my students in Malaysia. My friend Shelby was leading a group of her students back to class after one of their basketball games and one of them saw me coming down the hallway across the courtyard. He had the biggest, happiest grin on his face as he announced his team’s failure.

Due to my own faulty memory, I can’t even remember that student’s name, but I can remember his smile and infectious joy.

Not to over spiritualize this moment, but it got me thinking this week about how we are called to live a life of losing. And not just losing, but losing joyfully. Jesus Himself told us that this is the way that we should live.

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25).

I think many Christians, myself included, see this verse as a burden. And yes, it is painful to put to death the things of the flesh: our sinful desires and harmful habits, and to live under a truth that cuts deep and doesn’t let us escape.

It is difficult to give up our idols of comfort, identity, and ambition. It is difficult to walk on that narrow road, especially when dear friends and family start to fall away because the truth divides. Jesus promised division though – “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” (Luke 12: 51-53). That can be a bitter pill to swallow. When the cost is high, it is hard to keep going.

How much harder then is it to lose it all with joy? How do you adopt the attitude of Paul in Philippians 3:7 “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.” He gave up all at the highest cost – his own life – and why? The answer is in the very next verses, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord….that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (vs. 8-10).

I think I struggle with these verses of walking the narrow road and giving up all for Christ because I don’t have a right view of God. I don’t value Christ as I should because my perspective is so clouded by the weight and sin of this world.

I want my view of Christ to be so elevated that it is nothing to lose all that I value in this life. This is not to say the people and matters of this life are not important, but they pale in comparison to the gem that is Christ. He gave all for me, the least I can do is give it all to Him. In His hands, all that I love is far better cared for than in my own.

I want to value Him so much that the cares and worries of this life will shrink. I want to know those surpassing riches of His presence, to be so enraptured with His beauty that nothing else matters except to pursue Him and point others to Him. And at the end of my days, I want to run into His arms with a joyful smile and be able to say, “God, I lose all!”

For in Him, I have found all.